


Introspection And Poetry, But Not In That Order

by kickmyhead



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: i am back on my bullshit, in other words thomas realises that hes stupid but hes having fun, this is me banging rocks together just to hear the crash at this point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29734338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickmyhead/pseuds/kickmyhead
Summary: In which Thomas finally realises that he has a family.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Introspection And Poetry, But Not In That Order

Feelings were certainly something.

For Thomas, they were an endless pool of inspiration from which his cup runneth over, a glass lake which held up his deepest desires and wants, a… he’d lost focus again. Besides that very good line of poetry that he had just lost to his attention span, Thomas had a lot of thoughts on feelings. They were essential to life, they were of utmost importance, they were, and he hated to admit this, very difficult to understand. 

He was beginning to accept that fact.

Well, you had to, given the circumstances surrounding his current quality of life, or death, as it were. As much as he’d like to lounge around dramatically for a thousand years feeling sorry for himself, it really wasn’t productive, and anyways, he’d also preferably like to be alive, which wasn’t happening anytime soon. Before all this (All This being capitalised), Thomas wasn’t sure he believed in an afterlife, simply because it would be deeply depressing and inspiring if there wasn’t. Live each day as if it was your last, and write a lot of poetry about it.

But, well, his little ongoing stint in this manor house was proving that there really was no point in Carpe Diem. Life was an endless, miserable, not even lucrative little wreck, and death wasn’t much better, which he frantically repeated to anyone who ventured in the house for the first few years after biting the dust. God, he really did think he was doing a service. An act of warning, like a romantic ghost, hand against chest, heroic, saintly, heart wrenching. He had given up on that dream quite a while ago (around the 1960s, when Beatniks had become a thing, and when Thomas had started desperately wanting to be one).

The fact is, he’d been there for quite a long time, and while he would never admit this to anyone, he had really given up on the whole I only understand myself act. After all, he really didn’t. Despite his jail time (jail, manor house, is there a vehicle there?) he still found himself confused, selfish, and wholly stupid a lot of the time, and it irritated him. Wasn’t that the point of solitude? To make you wise beyond your years? Well, he had quite frankly found those years, and he still wasn’t wise, which rather defeated the point. 

Well, he supposed, what he had wasn’t exactly solitude. It was like boarding at a house filled with people you utterly hate. Thomas would have preferred loneliness, if anything, would’ve preferred being a restless soul with sunken eyes and great cheekbones, but no, they had to ruin that, didn’t they? They had to rope him in with their fun organized games and films with surprisingly beautiful Mr Darcys and cheerfulness, and spoil the perfect little yearning poet he had been practicing for so long. And the worst part was, he didn’t find himself minding. 

They were an unusual, mean, and deeply selfish lot, but they were his lot, and that was worst of all.

Thomas had never found himself with friends most of his life. Which he often found himself okay with, because he was misunderstood, ahead of his time, mysterious, a loner, adjective adjective adjective. All he wanted to be was respected, which he already was, given the old money and the powerful family and the puffed sleeves aspect, and given the fact he was young and eligible and male. But, a small, traitorous, sentimental in all the wrong ways side of himself wanted, quite annoyingly, to be liked, and he never got that. He never got camaraderie and pats on the back and nicknames and friendly drinks. He got stiff obligations, invites to balls that were spent mostly alone at the refreshments, preposterously old relatives asking to borrow vases they never returned. He never really faced up to that, that unloveable aspect of himself, that annoying aspect, that infuriatingly unself aware aspect, that hopeful one, because really, it was pain without a poem, and what was the point in that?

But when he died, ironically, he found himself laden with people that, while not respecting him at all, liked him, truly liked him, and it was (and he hated to say this) pleasant.

Robin often liked to sneak up on him and give him a heart attack that probably would have killed him twice, Mary referred to him as a pomp and a weasel and a croak (the meaning he had no idea, but the tone betrayed plenty otherwise), Kitty was brutally honest about his poetry with a smile, and Humphrey was… Humphrey, but they did like him, and that horribly made him feel quite warm and fuzzy inside. Like one of those lava lamps he was trying to convince Alison to buy.

Alison was someone he was confused by too. He had spent about five months trying to pursue her, but eventually this infatuation petered out, mostly out of boredom. In retrospect, he actually didn’t love her, but more liked her, as a friend. Someone to watch old period romances and shout about plotlines in soaps and discuss embarrassing insider information about the romantics with, instead of someone to present flowers and love songs to. It was nice, having a friend who could also change the disks in the blu ray.

It was nice, he realised, one day, at his sighing place. It truly was. All of it. 

For a lot of his afterlife, Thomas had spent it mourning the love he never had, and while he never did get that specific type he pursued, he did get something else, and somehow that was just as good.


End file.
